Abstract:

The question of human origins is one of the ultimate questions of human existence, and the study of human origins touches on many philosophical issues. Based on recent advances in paleoanthropology and biology, this paper briefly reviews the history of human origins and evolution, and discusses philosophical issues such as the nature of being, the purpose and meaning of human existence, divine creation and evolution, the driving force of human origins and evolution, the nature and role of labor, and contingency and necessity. Counting from the origin of primates, human evolution has a history of at least 56 million years, or 7-8 million years if we count from the human-ape divergence in the sense of evolutionary biology. As a class of biological organisms and the bearer of the subjective world, the nature of being has always been a very complex subject, and it is even impossible for most people to have a recognized answer. From a biological point of view, human existence is essentially the existence of nature. Human beings are a part of the nature and greatly influence the existence of the nature. The characteristics of human beings that distinguish them from primates are the essential characteristics of human beings in the biological sense. In the study of human origins, the question of the nature of being should be examined from different angles of the various sub-disciplines of biology. The purpose and meaning of human existence at the philosophical level are not scientific questions, and the test standards of scientific research can not be applied to it. If human existence has a purpose and meaning, then that purpose and meaning is “existence”. Although traditional creationism is no longer a major part of the human knowledge system, the ideas represented by intelligent design still attempt to answer the questions of whether or not supernatural forces and intelligent things exist, and why they exist. As a living creature, the origin and development of human beings are not fundamentally different from those of other living creatures, and the driving force of human evolution is the result of a combination of intrinsic genetic factors and extrinsic environmental factors. There have been heated discussions about the role of “labor” in the origin and evolution of human beings, but from the empirical evidence of modern paleontology, archaeology, zoology, behavior, ecology, and other disciplines, it is impossible to give an accurate definition of “labor”. It can be argued that human labor itself is a state of behavior exhibited by humans in the process of survival and reproduction. The accumulation of contingent events is recorded, that is, the process of obtaining a quantitative change, and when the quantitative change accumulates to a level where order and hierarchy can be recognized, the change can be defined as qualitative change. Qualitative change in human evolution also occurs when the accumulation of countless contingent changes reaches a definable level. Self-awareness and thinking are not unique to humans. The development of complex systems in the universe with the ability to think is a necessity of material development, but the exact form in which it appears in things is controlled by chance.

Key words: Paleoanthropology, Human origins, Philosophy, Labor